


ABCs of IMF

by SpaghettiCanActivist (orphan_account)



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: All Platonic - Freeform, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Asphyxiation, Attempt at Humor, Broken Bones, Dehydration, Electrocution, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Heat Stroke, Humor, Influenza, Japanese Encephalitis, Kidney failure, Nerve Damage, Self Confidence Issues, Team Bonding, Whump, concussion, fracture, lycanthropy, tetanus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-18 21:08:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20319517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/SpaghettiCanActivist
Summary: Benji Learns the ABCs of getting beat up, too bad he didn't take lessons from Ethan.





	1. T is for Tetanus

They never asked him if he was alright, didn’t really question his health when they saw a body clear of injury. Benji couldn’t really fault them it. Honestly it had been his fault, if anyone’s. 

He’d messed up on the mission. Thank god no one had died. It didn’t help Ethan’s look of disappointment, the tight anger in Will’s face or the way neither Luther nor Jane would quite make eye contact with him. 

They had all parted ways after a very short debriefing and Benji had walked out of their current safehouse (soon to be pawned off now that their mission was over) feeling exhausted and jittery. The slow walk to some sort of motel wasn’t particularly encouraging as the slight fever he’d been experiencing for the last little while seemed to increase its course.

It was also isolating. Usually the team would stick together after a mission, help each other lick their wounds and make sure they got on whatever transport IMF had reserved for them, the intent for them to stay absolutely hidden. 

Benji let out a shaky breath, head spinning a little. His hand found the stucco of a building wall next to him and he waited. The dizziness subsided enough for him to open his eyes. It was dark out, just past four in the morning in some little byway on the outskirts of Pardubice. He started to step up, the movement causing the puncture wound in his side to ripple with discomfort.

It wasn’t an important injury, having occurred a couple of days ago when their whole mission had commenced. Benji ignored the pain, a small part of him feeling that it was rightly earned and deserved.

He made it to a room and managed, in broken Russian barely understood by the motel manager who spoke Czech, to get himself a room. 

Entering the room, he first went to the bathroom. As he’d walked the rest of the way to the motel he had felt the fever rise again, with it a sheen of sweat covering him. Now, even though his journey was over, his heartbeat felt exaggerated and strange in his chest, his whole body aching and the puncture wound throbbing. 

Taking a shaky breath he headed into the bathroom. Everything felt too small, the bathroom walls seeming to bend around him. Most of all he felt wrong. Shaking his head, Benji nearly sent himself tumbling to the ground, the movement causing his dizziness to spike. Fumbling with the faucet, his shaking hands managed to turn it. 

He splashed his face with water. Sucking in a deep breath, Benji braced himself on the sink, fingers clenched hard on the surface. Staring in the mirror he blinked, trying to keep his vision focused.

He’d really messed up on this mission. He knew he wasn’t the most, well, useful agent in the world. Too often he messed things up, made an oversight or failed to take into consideration the full breadth of a mission. As much as he loved his team, how many more times would they put up with something going awry? How many more times would they attribute a mistake or hiccup in a mission to Benji’s general ineptitude?

Benji sucked in a breath. IMF was his life, every friend, every meaningful moment in the last ten years had been had because of his work. He would give anything to be able to stay. But he couldn’t compare to the giants he worked with and at some point they were going to realize that he was a liability.

“Benji?”

Benji jerked a little, surprise furrowing his brow at the unexpected call of his name. The voice, though strangely distorted by the harsh thrum of his blood, was distinctly Ethan’s. The bathroom door, already a little ajar was pushed most of the way open by Ethan. He didn’t come any further into the room.

Benji’s shoulders hunched, his subconscious hackles rising. He didn’t want Ethan here to lecture him on things he already knew, he felt too sick to be able to take it, still to emotionally disbalanced.

“I came to see how you were doing. You ran out right after the debrief.”

Benji closed his eyes, his whole body pulsing, he swallowed hard. It was silent for a short while.

Ethan let out a small sigh.

“Look,” he started softly, “about the mission, Benji-”

“Don’t say it,” Benji spit out harshly, not wanting to hear whatever it was his team lead would tell him.

Benji, with his back turned, didn’t see the look of surprise followed by a probing look over from Ethan. After several seconds of consideration, concern etched its way onto Ethan’s face. He took a step forward.

“I already know what you’re going to say,” Benji hissed, head now pounding.

“And what am I going to say?” Ethan asked softly, words measured.

Benji felt his pain spike in his head, the warmth of his fever growing and his whole body protesting. He ground his heel against his forehead and clenched his eyes shut again.

“I know what any of you would say,” he whispered.

A moment passed and Benji felt a hand on his elbow. He jerked away, throwing himself back against the wall, panic threatening to take over. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, the walls pushing in further and further.

Ethan was approaching him, hands held out in a gesture which indicated he meant no harm and a look of extreme worry on his face.

“What would we say Benji?” Ethan asked softly.

Benji felt tears of pain, mainly physical, and of absolute frustration with his own ineptness rise. He slammed a fist against the wall behind him.

“I failed,” Benji said.

Confusion and then understanding passed across Ethan’s face.

“Benji, you didn’t-”

“Don’t lie!” Benji yelled.

His heartbeat felt like a staccato, harsh and fast, his body burning and the stupid bloody puncture wound throbbing alongside it all.

“Don’t lie,” he said a little softer, hissing through grit teeth.

“Benji, I think you need to come with me, you’re not well.”

Ethan stepped forward, hands coming towards Benji. Benji jerked away, pushing past Ethan. Everything rose up, his body spiralling into some messy conclusion. He made it two steps before his legs gave out, head cracking against the sink as he fell to the floor.

He was half conscious as his body jerked and convulsed, muscles tightening painfully, spasming and jerking. He barely noticed Ethan on the floor next to him, words being spoken that he couldn’t hear. After what seemed ages and mere seconds, his body finally relaxing, he fell unconscious.

  
  


Two months later…

The hospital room they’d put him up in had lost any and all appeal (though arguably one could say that there hadn’t been any appeal to begin with) within the first week. He was two months into his stay at the government medical wing and so far the only reprieve were Ethan Hunt’s daily visits, among other occasional visitors.

Apparently the seemingly harmless puncture wound had made Benji the recipient of the bacterium clostridium tetani. Given three days of a body weakened by stress and their mission, the little bacteria had propagated just wonderfully in Benji’s body.

Tetanus wasn’t particularly fun and it had a long recovery date.

“Queen,” Ethan said, smiling in triumph as he threw down his card and took the stack of a triple threat on the card game war.

A bit juvenile, but considering the unpleasant spasms Benji was still experiencing it was an easy game to play and enjoy. Benji didn’t smile in return, a sense of apathy having come on strong now that he was closer to being healthy.

Ethan eyed him but said nothing, merely flipping over the next card to continue the game. They hadn’t really talked much about anything serious. The first three weeks of recovery had been hard and Benji hadn’t really been capable of doing anything. Then Ethan had to leave for a week or so and Luther, Will and Jane had replaced him.

He’d only just come back a few days ago and Benji was in much better health than he had been in before.

“You know Benji, I’m glad you’re alright.”

Benji glanced up to see Ethan staring down at his cards.

“Me too,” Benji replied, then chuckling as he realized how silly that sounded, “it’d suck to be dead.”

Ethan gave a slow nod.

“Next time, tell me, tell your team. We can’t do what we do without you.”

Benji snorted, a bitter smile on his face. It caused Ethan to set his cards down.

“I’m pretty sure the only thing I do is mess up all of our missions.”

“That’s not true,” Ethan argued.

“Well, speak for your bloody self, I not only almost compromised our last mission, in the process I failed to seek medical attention and landed myself in the hospital, useless.”

“Benji this is just one mission-”

“But it’s not!” Benji yelled, immediately feeling ashamed at breaking like that.

He flushed with embarrassment, casting his eyes away. His cards lay forgotten on his lap. He rubbed at the back of his neck.

“I-I just, I feel like I let you guys down, every mission.”

“You don’t.”

Benji looked up to see Ethan looking intensely at him.

“You’re one of the best men on my team and I trust you more than nearly any other person I’ve ever worked with.”

Benji saw the raw honesty in the statement and had to swallow the sudden lump in his throat. He blinked hard, turning his head away. Ethan leaned back and picked his own cards back up, throwing the next one down.

Benji cleared his throat and picked his own card up. He smiled, holding it up for Ethan to see.

“Ace of spades,” he said with a wet chuckle.

“Always,” Ethan replied, shaking his head as he chuckled as well.


	2. A is for Asphyxiation

Benji Dunn struggled to keep on his toes, shoes scrabbling against the ground. The pressure around his windpipe and neck was overwhelming and his body was screaming at him to use as much self-preservation as possible. He felt the rope tighten a little more, raising him so that his toes just barely brushed the ground. Fingers clawed at the fibers, thoughtless to the damage the blunt nails were doing to the soft skin around where the rope was tight.

His vision, already narrowed, started to blacken totally, his resistance slowly fading, strength seeping away as his body began to fail him.

And then the pressure was gone, he was given enough slack to be once again able to stand on his toes. His body struggled to respond, one leg sliding across the floor in his desperate attempts to regain footing, causing the rope to jerk against his throat. He gagged, choking more, but finally standing once again on tip-toe, the rope still tight enough to remind him that he was in no way safe.

“Do you have an answer now?”

The woman was not beautiful in the way that the many women in this field were. Rather plain, a little short and much too stout. Born in the Chechen republic, Ekaterina Popova, a name no doubt taken, was simply an unpleasant effect of their current mission.

“D-don’t think so,” Benji hissed, barely able to talk.

Popova’s dark eyes merely came across as bored and inconvenienced. A contract ‘killer’ of sorts, she was known for getting information out of people and for having “thrilling” results.

She ‘tsked’. Folding her arms she circled Benji’s form, pace slow and leisurely.

“You know what I think?” she asked, smiling as she looked up into Benji’s face.

A rather brawny looking man in the corner tugged a bit on the rope that had been tossed over a sturdy ceiling pipe and was currently wrapped around Benji’s throat. Benji grunted, losing some of his balance. He regained it quickly, but the increased pressure caused his poorly veiled panic to start to rise to the surface.

“That I am bored of asking you questions. Americans talk too much, but they never say the truth.”

She chuckled, shaking her head. She then spread her hands in a ‘what can you do?’ gesture.

“But, I work with what I have, no?”

Benji’s lips twitched a little with a bitter smile. She waved her hand, motioning to the man holding the rope. Benji’s whole body tensed, waiting for the rope to be pulled and for him to be raised up once again. But that didn’t happen. The man relaxed his grip slightly, almost making it so Benji could stand flat on his feet, before then beginning to tie it off to a pipe.

The relief Benji had felt upon gaining a little more slack was immediately replaced with fear of what would come next. The man approached and Popova turned away, moving to a dark area of the room. Benji’s gaze flicked between the two of them, before settling on the man as he approached.

The first punch hurt. Aimed at his abdomen, it hit home with painful accuracy, jerking him back and causing the rope to bite painfully into his skin from the left side. Benji scrambled to stand back up. Panting, he barely had time to look at the man before another hit put him off balance again.

The third hit came before he could completely recovered. By the fourth and fifth he was hanging, feet having fallen out from under him, and his whole body buzzing between pain, shock, and a slowly growing need for air. His vision blackened when the hits stopped and the front of his shirt was grabbed. He was pulled up so he could once again breathe.

The man was looking away towards Popova, merely holding Benji up so he wouldn’t die.

Benji felt hopelessness wash over him. He was alone, his friends would probably never find him in time and he would die alone. Even his killers could care less, not even slightly interested in him. Benji felt infinitesimally small and extraordinarily lonely.

“Стой!”

Benji blinked rapidly, trying to get his vision to focus enough to be able to tell what was happening.

Popova stepped from the shadows, a harsh frown pulling down across her face.

“Оставайте его,” she said.

The man nodded his head, releasing Benji’s shirt front and making it so Benji had to support his own weight. Benji grunted, trembling legs once again getting some sort of leverage. Popova gave Benji a short up down before the dark eyes flitted away and she turned her back.

“Закончите,” she said softly, nodding slightly at the man.

Benji’s brow dipped, his muddled brain trying to register the word. She disappeared into the shadows and Benji watched as the man moved over to the rope. Confusion filled him as he watched the man unwrap the rope. It was quickly replaced by panic as the man began tugging the rope up. Benji tried to yell, but his throat, already so abused, was starting to swell and robbing him of his ability to speak.

Benji felt his toes lift, his fingers and hands working to keep his neck from receiving further abuse. Another tug lifted the balls of his feet up, leaving just his toes to scrape at the cement. One more tug brought him up just a few centimeters from the ground. The man tied the rope off and began to walk away.

Benji struggled, body jerking, conscious quickly slipping away. His gaze began to grow glazed, his arms weakening and his movements slowly decreasing. His lids fluttered at half mast and his arms relaxed, falling to his side. One moment his eyes were open and the next they weren’t.

Ethan had been stupid to think that the mission would go smoothly. They had retrieved the information, kept a lot of people from being harmed, but they’d lost Benji, the foreign agency having hired an outside party. 

Her name was Ekaterina Popova and she was bad news. Ethan was the one who had sent Benji in, told him that they were good, a greenlight to walk into a death trap. Three hours was too long, much, much too long. There wasn’t time to wait on back up. As soon as he had heard that Brandt was pulling out with the retrieved items he had headed to where he believed Popova was.

The giant cement industrial building was a horrible maze. But it was convenient enough and of the sort of place that someone like Popova would use. Ethan raced through the halls, searching for Benji and knowing that each second was precious. 

Finally, sweat dripping down his face and his breath coming fast, Ethan burst into one of the basement rooms.

It was spacious, lit such that only the center of the room was really visible, and empty. All except for the body dangling from the ceiling, feet just centimeters above the floor. 

Ethan felt his heart stutter, mind unable to process the fact that it was Benji hanging from the rope looking so lifeless.

It took him a second to spur into action. Eyes darting around the room he looked for a way to bring his friend down. In a moment he spied the rope tied to the pipe and he sprinted over. Untying it, he let it go, looking over his shoulder to see Benji’s body drop.

He ran, unfeeling to his knees hitting the ground with an unpleasant crack.

“Benji?” he breathed out, eyes scanning over his friend and seeing a chest much too still.

“No,” Ethan whispered, hands hovering over Benji, scared of proving the devastating reality true.

“No,” he said a little more firmly, shaking his head.

Pressing his palms to Benji’s sternum, he gave fifteen rhythmic pumps. He moved his hands away to adjust Benji’s head, one hand pinching the man’s nose and the other holding his chin. He leaned down and gave three breaths. 

He repeated the motion. Benji’s body stayed absolutely still, eyelids shut and form deathly still. Ethan felt his eyes growing wet. His fingers were shaking. 

“C’mon Benji, c’mon,” Ethan whispered.

He pressed down on Benji’s chest knowing he was pushing to hard, that he could possibly be breaking ribs. But Benji was so still, so un-Benji. Ethan’s eyes flashed to the garish red and slightly purpled area that was Benji’s neck.

He did another mouth to mouth, quickly moving back to compressions.

It wasn’t working.

“No!” Ethan yelled, continuing to work, “You don’t get to die!”

Benji made no response, body completely still. Ethan was crying, hands shaking so bad now that he struggled to clasp them together to do compressions. He kept going, finishing the compressions.

“Please,” Ethan whispered, moving to mouth to mouth.

Pulling back he stared down at Benji.

“I’m not giving up,” he said.

He began applying compressions again.

On the ninth compression Benji’s eyes fluttered and his chest shifted. It wasn’t a lot. Ethan pulled back and stared. Benji’s chest was rising and falling weakly, but it was moving. Benji was alive. Ethan relished in that fact for a moment.

But the battle wasn’t done and he needed real medical attention. Pressing his comm, Ethan looked down at Benji, thanking whatever God existed.

“I found him Luther, get us a medevac.”

  
  


“Bloody hell Ethan, could you keep you shit off of my coffee table?”

Ethan merely looked up from the newspaper he was reading, an amused smile on his face.

Benji was standing there, glaring down at him with utter annoyance. Ethan watched him grab the cup of coffee and set it on a side table, a melodramatic huff sounding from him.

“Maybe keeping state of the art hardware on your coffee table isn’t the best idea,” Ethan said.

Benji whipped around, eyebrows raised and bristling with his usual Benji-like indignation.

“Excuse me?!”

Ethan shrugged.

“It’s a coffee table Benji, and I put coffee on it. Seems straightforward to me.”

“Oh, you did-excuse me?!”

Ethan’s smile grew and he pulled the paper up to hide it.

Benji sat down indignantly on the couch, the movement causing his turtle neck to shift and reveal a patch of white bandages which covered the many injuries.

“I think, since this is my home and I can therefore decided the exact use of my coffee table and what-” Benji continued.

Ethan’s smile grew and he contented in watching Benji rant. Despite the lingering rasp and the bandages, Benji was whole and alive. Ethan hadn’t lost him yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this is pretty much just whump without plot.


End file.
